"Guande Chongde Bloom" plans a single-family balcony with livable space of about 4 square meters and equipped with 3 trees.
Driven by policy incentives, balconies have gradually changed from a supporting role in residential buildings to a competitive project in construction planning. The Taichung City Government promotes livable building policies and provides measures such as volume exemption for vertical green balconies that comply with regulations. This has also made builders pay more attention to balcony scale, planting and landscape design in recent years. From the perspective of market supply, the number of approved and completed livable buildings in Taichung continues to increase, and green balconies have gradually become a common configuration in residential planning.
According to data from the Urban Development Bureau of the Taichung City Government, the number of approved livable buildings in 2026 has reached 360, an increase of more than 20% from the 287 cases in the same period in 2025; the number of completed cases has increased from 45 to 76, an annual increase of nearly 70%, indicating that livable buildings have gradually entered the market stage of actual completion and use from the policy encouragement stage.
The reason why livable buildings are valued by builders is that balconies can increase outdoor space and green configuration. Compared with traditional residential balconies, which are mainly used for drying clothes, placing home appliances or sundries, livable buildings have relaxed part of the volume calculation through policy incentives, allowing builders to have more space to configure planting, landscape and outdoor activity areas, and also transforming balconies from an accessory space to a part of residential product planning.
However, as the number of livable buildings on the market increases, greening itself has gradually become a basic feature. The differences between builders have begun to extend from “whether there is a balcony” to further extending to spatial scale, planting configuration, construction quality and subsequent maintenance.
Looking at areas with a higher concentration of livable buildings in Taichung City, construction projects such as "Sky One" and "Lu Fu Xusen" also combine livable balconies with building exteriors and planting designs. The former focuses on curved buildings and three-dimensional planting, while the latter continues a large number of green configurations, showing that builders no longer regard livable balconies as just policy conditions, but as part of the overall architectural design.
However, with the increase in balcony planting, issues such as waterproofing, drainage, root growth and subsequent maintenance have also become issues that need to be faced after the actual use of the house. Especially after trees and large plants enter the residential space, in addition to the landscape effect in the design stage, the relationship between long-term maintenance and the building itself will also affect the future use experience of residents.
Huang Xuanlu, executive director of "Guande Chongde Branch", pointed out that policy incentives have indeed led to an increase in livable buildings, but as supply gradually increases, it is difficult to form a clear advantage through greening alone. Product competition must still return to residential fundamentals such as layout, square footage efficiency, and construction quality.
She said that in the past, livable balconies mostly stayed in the design and pre-sale stages. Nowadays, the number of completed projects has increased significantly, which also means that the market has begun to enter the testing period of actual use. For owner-occupiers, whether they can balance living functions and subsequent maintenance is the key to differentiation of construction projects.
